When true colors bleed
by rhea-elizabeth
Summary: A difficult pregnancy and birth puts Cora in a depression that Robert works to pull her from.


**1895 - When true colors bleed **

Sybil is born on a sweet summer morning in a bed of blood.

She had been harder to carry than the rest that came before her. With Mary each new pain and movement had given her pause, made her wonder and worry, but their doctor had given her peace and assurances while she waited for the heir to be born and the household to rejoice. Edith had practiced her courtesies since before she came into the world – she was a gentle baby with soft movements, an easy birth and she rarely cried.

Her third child seems to weigh heaviest on her, and there are days that she can barely rise from her bed (and days that she in fact does not, when Robert sends her maid away with orders to leave her to rest and she wakes to find the day nearly gone). It is the first time while she carries a child that she feels that her body is truly not her own – she is at the mercy of the baby's whims, she does not merely grow and change and adjust, and when she lies with her energy zapped and her spirits low, she reminds herself that it is only temporary, that the child shall be born soon.

_Soon_ does not come quickly this time, she labors throughout a day and night, and by the time the afternoon sun is low in the sky on the second day her body has gone vague and dreamy with exhaustion, working without her knowledge (it has not been her own, this time). Dimly she is aware of Dr. Clarkson's encouragements, of the nurse's grip on her thigh, of Robert's anxious strides outside her room, of his hand on her brow during his irregular appearances. She thinks deliriously that this child shall never come, and that it is an impossible task and she wonders how she did it twice before.

The nurses ply her with drink and broth, and she heaves them up again until her lips are dried and cracked, and as the second night falls she is shivering despite being soaked in fevered sweat. As each hour slips away and still the baby does not appear the panic in her stomach clenches, and she wonders what is to be her fate.

Her mother in law is there in the room, in the corner, watching her with sad solemn eyes, and her presence alone prevents Cora from yelling and screaming, and she finds herself only able to gasp for air, as through her vocal chords are snapped. The tears come then, unwanted but unabashed, tears of fear and pain and she feels a hand curl around the back of her head and pull her in, her raw cheek scratching against his jacket and she clings to Robert until her fingers turn white, as through that will keep her alive, keep her tethered. And then another pain is crashing through her body, ripping her in two, and she gives a choked whimper, her cries long gone hoarse, and in that moment, does not care if she lives or dies as long as it is _over_, she just wants it to be _over_.

When the baby is finally, finally born as dawn breaks on the third day, when she hears its lusty cry and knows it is alive, her weeping turns to relief even as the room swims before her, as though she is seeing the world from underwater, like when she was a girl and swam in the ocean and gazed up into the lightened sky. She tries to lift her arms for her baby, so badly fought for, but they are leaden and useless at her sides, and she tries to focus on the faces around her, on the doctor and nurse and on her mother in law but she catches only glimpses – Clarkson's serious eyes on her face, Violet's mouth set in a grim line, the wailing new-born swaddled in the nurse's arms and there, the blood beneath her, much more than she remembers, straining the sheet under her and her thighs and still coming with each pulsing throb between her legs.

They are speaking to her but their words sound far away and disjointed, and a cup of sour liquid is pressed to her lips. She does not resist, could not if she wished it, it is more peaceful to die this way, she decides and she can hear the baby still crying and the sound of it loud and safe is what sends her to sleep.

It is three days before she wakes, three days of nightmares behind her eyelids before the world comes back into focus. Three days before she is able to see her baby and then two more before she is able to hold it for the first time, a pillow propped under her elbow for support. It's another girl, as sweet and lovely as Mary and Edith had been, and she kisses her forehead even as her heart gives a pang and she thinks that she has disappointed once more. But she is her girl, another beautiful daughter with dark hair and great blue eyes, and she is all the more precious for how hard won she is.

Her maid is careful around her, and quiet, as though she is fragile and breakable and she feels hollow at her treatment and chafes at the confinement. She thinks of the whispers that might follow, _weak, fragile, unworthy, American. _She bristles at the idea and tries to rise, but Dr. Clarkson orders bed rest for a fortnight and he will not budge and Robert will not relent and her maid follows their orders. And when Clarkson comes to see her at the end of the fortnight, there is some trouble hanging in the room with them after he examines her to check her healing, a furrow in his brow, and when he says nothing she asks the question hanging between them.

'Will I be able to have another child?'

The kindly doctor purses his lips, frowning, considering, and she waits expectedly – he is an honest man, holding tight to his belief in the importance of truth. 'I do not know,' he answers finally, and she flinches at the words despite herself, despite her desire to know. 'Perhaps. Perhaps not. There is scarring, my lady – but it is early yet. Your womb will heal. Only time will tell.'

She is young still, and it is a bitter pill to swallow and she finds that she chokes on it when she is finally able to rise from her bed. She attends her duties of running the household still sore but with a desperate sort of determination, to right her world again, a silent declaration _I am not weak_. She hold little Sybil in her arms, her precious girl, and tries to ignore the ache in her heart for what she is not. She thinks of the birthing bed, of how she had wept, and her cheeks flush red in shame (not only she did not do her duty, she thinks, but also did not bear the burden and had instead cracked, and they spend all their time trying to piece her back together and instead just rip her further apart).

She is steel and stone in the days that bleed into weeks, she refuses rest and care and she does her duty as she has always been taught to do (and now it comes to pass that it may be all she has left to give). She watches Mary and Edith playing in the nursery, and they help her with the baby, little ladies that they are, and Sybil laughs for the first time, and at times she is able to forget everything that is broken and wrong.

The times she is unable to forget, she starts half a dozen letters to her mother, but the words stick in her throat and she taps the pen until the ink freezes. Martha has always been a shrewd woman and she expects no warm words of comfort from her.

One after another her thoughts go into the fire, and she watches them burn.

It is the nights that press down on her mouth and nose like a suffocating glove, and she paces the room while her husband sleeps unawares, and she tries to catch her breath. The sheets were taken away after the birth, the linens removed and replaced, even the soft feather mattress changed, and her bed is fresh and clean. And yet when she lies there at night she is sure she can still smell the blood thick in the air and she cannot sleep. She stretches up to throw open the windows; normally she despises the frigid night air, but it helps her to breathe and she rests her hand heavily against the wall.

'Cora.' His voice is thick with sleep and she turns her head to see Robert watching her tiredly, barely illuminated by the lone candle she has left burning. 'Come to bed.'

Numbly she turns back to the bed, leaving the window open to air out the room, the musty scent of unpleasant memories, and she crawls in next to him, pulling the duvet up to her chin to ward against the cold.

Behind her, Robert shifts, his body curling against hers in a familiar move and touch, his large hand spread wide on her stomach, his face nestling against the top of her head. The failure sits all the heavier in her heart then, and it is easy to think somber thoughts in the darkness, to wonder if he will still want to touch her if there will never again be the chance at a child, a boy with his light hair and eyes.

'Are you unwell?' he asks, his voice low and intimate and yet she has to bite her tongue to keep to herself from crying out against it, the concern and care, she is no delicate thing that will shatter (perhaps merely splinter). 'You've been quiet.' His fingers brush against her cheekbone, and she sights at the touch, and resists the urge to reach up and press his hand there, to use him as a tether as she had when she had worked so hard to birth their daughter. 'And you look tired.'

It would be easy enough, to excuse it on the basis of a new child and a large household to run, but she chews her lip uneasily. It would be better to tell him; Cora has never been able to abide secrets and intrigue.

'Dr. Clarkson says I may be unable to bear another child,' she says quietly, voice heavy with regret and resignation, her eyes downcast, and she whets her lips, the words sour to taste. They are words she did not think to say for years yet, not with her babies born healthy and strong, and she feels old before her time, used and broken and robbed of what should come naturally to a woman and a wife.

His hand tightens on her stomach, pressing her firmly back against his chest, and she feels his breath against her ear as he exhales. 'I know,' he answers and she turns in his grip to look at him, eyes surprised. 'He told me as well. Is that what has been troubling you?' he asks, his finger threading through the ends of her hair, hand brushing against her back.

'Yes,' she says, bewildered, and she furrows her brow. 'Does it not trouble _you_?'

He sighs, and his fingers come to rest against the nape of her neck as he presses his lips briefly to her temple. 'Cora, you have blessed me with three children, all healthy and good and strong. If we are not meant to have more, I am content with all that we have.'

'I am not,' she blurts out, lifting her head to look at him, and he frowns. 'And nor is your mother. Nor is everyone else. They think I should be able to give you an heir, and they are right.'

His frown deepens, his fingers gripping at the hair at the base of her neck, his voice severe, brokering no room for argument. 'I don't care what everyone else _thinks_. You have more value to me than that. I had hoped you knew that.'

She lowers her eyes, somewhat abashed, and her voice catches in her throat despite herself when she answers. 'I do know. But I cannot help what I wish.' What she wishes, truly, she does not share, to be sure that she has earned her position in his house and in his heart, to succeed in every way possible as the lady of Grantham.

His eyes soften at the break in her voice, and he pulls her back down against his chest, where she can feel his heart beating steadily against her cheek, and her fingers curl into him the way they did that day; she blinks rapidly to try and keep that thought and the swirling panic it raises at bay.

'I was far more troubled to see you in such pain,' he murmurs against the crown of her head, and she thinks she does not imagine the tightening in his fingers that are now at her back. 'It wasn't like…before, was it.' His knuckles press against her spine, and she remembers anew that before Sybil he had only been present for Edith's birth, the easiest of the children she bore, his mother insisting he stay away while she labored their first daughter.

'No,' she agrees, and her smile is small and trembling when she glances up at him. 'They said childbirth is a woman's war. It seems that just as in real wars, some battles are bloodier than others.' Though she doesn't wish to articulate her thoughts, they linger in the corner of her mind, and she wonders where the line is. It seems so simple in the wars the men wage, the differences between life and death, but everything in childbed is blurry and grey, slipping from one world to the next. Cora wonders how closely she had brushed another fate.

A shadow crosses his eyes at that, and she wonders if his thoughts are similar as he brushes a thumb across her bottom lip. 'And if Sybil is in fact the last of those battles,' he says, and he tilts her chin up, pressing his lips against her eyelids, catching the dampness there that she struggles so valiantly to keep at bay, 'than you have done more than I could have asked of you, my love.'

'You do not think less of me?' she asks, her voice barely above a whisper as her thoughts travel back to her stillborn son, lost during the first year of her marriage, and the harsh rebukes she had suffered. Robert kisses her mouth now, tasting of brandy and of everything familiar and desired, and she opens her mouth against his, suddenly desperate and needy, and he pushes forward in response, hand cradling her jaw.

'No,' he answers firmly when he draws back. 'And you have no reason to think less of yourself.' Her lips curl in a small self-mocking smile at that; he knows her too well, after these years, can follow the trail of thought through her eyes. 'You are here and well, and so are our daughters – I have need of nothing more.'

She sighs and puts her head back down, wearily closing her eyes (he is right, she thinks, she is tired, and it has been weeks since she has slept well). 'And Clarkson did say that he was not certain,' she says, and Robert's hands are large and warm on her back through her nightclothes, rubbing soothing circles, and she sighs at the feeling. 'Perhaps he is wrong.'

'Perhaps,' Robert agrees, fingers pressing into the small of her back, and she lets out a small moan at the sensation. 'It does not matter, dearest.'

_It does matter, _she thinks, but the thought is vague; she should protest but her head swims with exhaustion and his touch is warm and soothing. It matters, but he will love her regardless, respect her anyway – she will still have him, and that matters, too, perhaps most of all.

She sleeps.

**As always, I'm interested to know what you think. Nevis xx**


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